Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/873

Rh of another chapter of equally distinct interest. The graphic descriptions are heightened by pictures of scenery, human life, and occupations, and the constructions of the natives. "How differently," says the author, "a number of us are impressed in the viewing of any one subject, by which observation we utterly fail to agree as to its character and worth! "The remark is pertinently illustrated in this book. The general impression has been that there is not much of value or interest in Alaska. The impression is inevitable, after reading "Our Arctic Province," either that Alaska is one of the most interesting regions of the earth, or that the author is one of those rarely gifted observers who know how to seek out and find matters of interest and beauty where ordinary men would only grope blindly.

preparation of this book has been instigated by the author's feeling of a want while pursuing his own studies as an ornithologist. He could find, on one side, no authoritative nomenclature of colors, and, on the other hand, no compendious dictionary of technical terms used in ornithology, with specific references to the exact parts of the bird to which they were intended to apply. In both cases, approximate identification was the most that could be expected. The identification of color-tints offers peculiar difficulties. The variations are almost infinite, and are subject to modifications by the changing aspects and incidence of the light. Very few natural colors or artificial ones are permanent; most of them are liable to change with time or under chemical influences. The author, in treating of those points, gives a chapter to the discussion of the "Principles of Color," in which he lays down ten color-elements, formed from the primary colors, which in their binary combinations give ninety more or less distinct colors; and these are susceptible of great diversites of intershadings. Seventeen pages are occupied with a "Comparative Vocabulary of Colors," giving equivalent names of colors and shades in six languages. A series of plates gives some two hundred of these colors in actual chromatic illustrations composed out of fine artists' pigments selected from the shops of the best makers as those most likely to be true and permanent in tone. The bibliography gives the names of eight books consulted, in the order of their importance. The second part of the book (the "Ornithologist's Compendium") contains a glossary of technical terms used in descriptive ornithology, and comparative tables of millimetres and English inches and decimals. Six plates in outline are intended to show and localize the parts of the bird and the forms of feathers and eggs.

work is attractive on account of its illustrations. The author made the journey which he describes in 1884-'85, for pleasure and recreation, with two companions, who went by his invitation upon a similar errand. The journey included Japan, China, India, and Ceylon, and other Eastern countries, and Europe. The account here given is confined almost entirely to the far East, because it was there the party sojourned the longest, and had the opportunity of viewing the many (to them) strange sights and scenes. A straightforward narrative of what they saw and heard is given, without pretense to learning or literary elaboration, with historical and statistical information obtained from the most reliable sources. The illustrations represent various phases of life and scenery in the East, and are of a very satisfactory character. They were carefully chosen, we are told, from a collection of more than eight hundred original pictures collected during the journey, and are colored true to nature.

worth of this originally valuable treatise has been vastly increased by its revision and enlargement. The first edition comprised two volumes, but the work has been so much extended that it was found necessary to issue this edition in three. The